HUMILITY AS PRACTICE

CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY'S all-time winningest head coach, still learning. 

My college coach Mike Bokosky said some classic things in our practices back in the 90s at Chapman University. There was color to be sure. Athletes, y'all know what I'm talkin' about. But listen. Of all I learned, I think one of the cooler things he ever said was when I started coming back around the school in the early 2000s. I heard him say, "I think I'm a better coach than I was when you were here."

There's a lot of grace in a statement like that, the grace one learns to afford to himself. We have to look at where we are and evaluate the stage of life against where we've been. When I finished in '97 I could see coach making tremendous strides just based on my final conversation with him after the last collegiate game I ever played. Coach and I had a typical player-coach relationship where he was the clear authority and I was the disgruntled player always wanting more minutes, more limelight. But he told me on the way to the van after that game that he should have played me more during my career. When you see someone you admire admit a failing, the power is immeasurable.

There comes a point in life where growth seems either impossible or too costly. It's easy and acceptable to coast. In '97 I was only 21 years old. I didn't get the significance. I was more focused on the fact that he was saying I was a better player than he thought during my college career. Forest for trees ma brothas and sistas. Here was a guy modeling a learning posture, still coaching me. When I saw him somewhere around 2006/2007 and he still claimed to be transitioning, being formed into a calmer more collected version of himself, I started paying attention. Am I a better me today than I was last year, or even last month? Hope so.